nemurinasai
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Hijikata dismisses Souji from the Shinsengumi, but for whose benefit?


**fandom - Peacemaker Kurogane**  
 **title - nemurinasai**  
 **rating - pg**  
 **pairing - hijikata x souji**  
 **description - Hijikata dismisses Souji from the Shinsengumi, but for whose benefit?**

 **Disclaimer - Peacemaker Kurogane isn't mine.**

 **nemurinasai.**  
 **By miyamoto yui**

"You hand me a music box and say goodbye?" He stares at the wooden, imported article in his hand and looks up to the halfway closed doors that remain as they are without budging.

The music box is an extension of himself, foreign and delicate. Inviting because of the craftsmanship, but so humble and simple in its beauty, it's almost soul-taking in its effect…

Before the mist passes through, dissipated by the presence of the almighty sun, the slender man stands behind the wooden doors, touching them with a single hand and holding the music box tighter with the other. With the door only half open, he stares at the taller, older man that lifts his chin proudly for him to see with both of those young eyes. Young in age, but not unacquainted nor left unsplattered by the different crimson shades of adulthood: forced to repent, accept, or deny.  
These eyes decisively dare not to fall asleep towards reality. Whatever that may be.

The older man, the captain, should close the door. His ponytail becomes tighter the more he looks upon the younger man before him clothed in dark, navy blue, the clothes he gave him as a gift a long time ago. They were just unwrapped yesterday when the young man became mad, laughing to himself while hugging these rags as if they were made of the most precious material in the world. To the boy, yes, they had been since to him, they were made with some sort of affection. Even if it was an afterthought, a random souvenir when the man had left for a few days and had come back after negotiations, tossing it into his room arrogantly. Part of that meeting was a business deal and the other was something to do with the pleasure quarters of all kinds, no status too high for the captain…

"You always throw me away without blinking. It is always so easy for you to leave me when things become difficult, once the night transform into day." The younger man tries his best to keep the small gap between them open while trying not to quiver. He fails as his body convulses to cough. And the captain looks on, unmoved by this small inconvenience. He can't seem to close the door.

 _/If you were going to leave, I'd do it first, you see? My pride becomes brittle whenever you watch me carefully, persistent and whole. Watching all of my actions, even all the ugliness is repulsive in your eyes, but you do not budge. And I keep you here because I can't let you go, but because of that too, I have to._

And now./

The man budges as he says, "You're starting to lose your head whenever you come into contact with blood. It doesn't make you silent, but makes you angry, as if it gives definition to you being alive. Don't you find that absurd? You know why we're all here. You above all people know this, Souji."  
His eyes do not waver even though he curses himself inside of his head. The grip on the door becomes tighter and the splinters dig in. His words are actually for himself, aren't they? He is a bastard that only cares about self-promotion.  
There is no room for feelings because they've been drained away by the blood.

 _/That's why you have to run. Survive longer. I don't know for what, but you must. And I can't ask the purity of your soul, no matter how dirty your hands may be, to stay for my sake. Pushing you until you're blind to everything except seeing my back as we leave a successful mission._

You suddenly came out of nowhere and each second, I knew you were destined to leave.  
I've held you captive long enough./

There is only emptiness.

No matter how much blood fills the abysmal vat of repetition, guilt, and loneliness, it won't ever be filled. The vat breaks and must be filled endlessly, never repaired of its holes.  
Spilling, spilling into nothingness.

Souji does not cry but there are tears. As he begins to cough, he covers his mouth and cringes from the excruciating pain passing through his chest and also through his own heart. But he does not feel shame. He holds out his hand out defiantly for the captain to see.  
Those eyes are as dangerously sharp as when he holds a sword, if not even more threatening. There are many things to say and he's thought of them as he'd cleaned his sword, taught other soldiers, used to bring the tea to his master, waited for the captain's return with the scent of soft women all around him…

He does nothing but wait while moving forward with the tip of the sword leading the way. Separating his honest soul, his tortured mind, and his passionate, yet pained heart, his inner conflict is coming out to the surface. He knows it even though no one can see the faltering strength behind his mind, coming out through the swings of his sword.

The other people say he's gotten better, but he knows…  
…desperation is barren. Love shouldn't be behind a sword that kills others, yet how are you supposed to give your all for that one person who is looking over their shoulder at you?

And then, to crush you, that person leaves to seek the company of everyone, but you? To avoid you because you aren't enough?  
Or are you asking too much?

Instead of voicing all the real words that stuck to his throat, his mouth lets out, "It is because I know that that I don't have anywhere to go that I cannot leave. You made it that way, didn't you, Hijikata-san?"

Hijikata is taken aback, but quickly shakes his head while smirking.

 _/The person you look up to was never here, Souji.  
The demon that killed relentlessly. The oni who spits at everyone who gets in his way._

At this moment, Kami-sama, if you will hear my pitiful voice after I denounced you with my own pathetic humanly power, reality begs imitation.

I can no longer be the person I used to be. I have a weakness now, Souji.  
The more I look at you, I question everything I've ever done. So, I'm not throwing you away because you are a burden…

I've learned to depend on you. And you shouldn't be the one to forgive my sins. There are too many. Count how many I've crushed from heart, to mind, to soul…  
Including yours.

And this one number I don't want to put on this invisible tally. It outweighs everything.

As when you first looked happily at that music box some Dutch trader brought…

I envy the innocence you've preserved…  
Something I don't recall ever having./

To tell the mermaid that suddenly came to the shore to go home is not his job, he keeps on telling himself.

 _/It is too late, isn't it? To give him up was never an option of escape, wasn't it?/_

And at that moment, Hijikata closes his eyes and carries Souji over his shoulder, closing the wooden entrance with the fog flowing through. He tells no one to disturb them or to even go to his part of the estate. Some of the servants blink their eyes and nod.

Stomp, stomp, stomp.  
THUMP!

Souji is thrown into the already cold futon and the music box flies towards one wall. He flinches from the pain as Hijikata pulls the small band from his hair and rips opens Souji's clothes. He then pins Souji's blood-stained hands onto the whiteness. His coat and the dark, navy blue yukata opens, exposing his chest to the Hijikata's confused eyes.  
With Souji's knees up, Hijikata leans forward. Souji's hair falls everywhere as Hijikata gazes at him with his black hair clasping onto the younger man's body in disarray.

"Is this what you wanted? Is this how you wanted me to dirty you too?!" He violently lifts Souji's wrists and buries them deeper into the futon, almost touching the wooden floor and shaking the room along with it.  
"Then I'll grant your wish!" Hijikata is so mad that he's shaking with anger. Still holding onto one wrist, he starts to suck on Souji's right nipple. The other hand is itself past the thigh-

"If that's what it will take to get through to you!" Souji shouts at the top of his lungs.  
Hijikata gets up with a start and looks at him with an expression that shows his guilt, finally faced dead-on with the cruelty he's always treated others with.

It is then that Souji's own tears and shaky voice betray him. "I worked hard and you did not say anything.

 _/I know, Souji.  
Stop looking at me like that./_

I did as you wanted and still you did not say anything.

 _/I know all this, Souji. Stop it…/_

And then, all I do is wait for you to return because I'm worried why you let yourself rot away. Showing me that your proud attitude is actually your invitation to suicide."

There are explanations to express these words that wrap around Hijikata's prideful, tightening chest. He takes his hands off of Souji as he clearly looks down at him. For the first time, he looks straight into his eyes with a piercing expression. His eyes squint as if he's never seen him before, recognizing him for the first time, or again in his life.  
The dryness on his eyelids remain.

His hands, which are to each side of Souji's head, grip onto the younger man's hair and the futon at the same time.

Then, he falls forward with his head pressing between the futon and Souji's naked shoulder.

The years, like the snow, piled up all the words until they became white. They were unable to be said anymore, embedded in every part of his being. Like a child, ripped of adult conventions, he finds that untainted place that Souji has called from the deepest part of his soul.

He turns his head to whisper into the younger man's ear, "Why…why couldn't it have been me?"

Souji scrunches up his eyes in realization as the tears fall down the sides of his face. For the past, the future, and the present, he sobs for the both of them. The never-ending ache that kept on echoing deep inside finally makes a loud sound, filtering out the room of all air.  
The comprehensible and incomprehensible unspoken words suffocate them.

At that moment, they hear each other's breathing and hopelessly pray for the sun not to come just yet. But the music box finally plays a few notes to comfort them a bit from the evolving nightmare as if to say,

"Nemurinasai."

Sleep for a while away from this terrifying reality that led into a small, wonderful dream…  
A self-delusional paradise founded on unsteady, life-like principles.

Souji pushes his hand into Hijikata's robe and touches his chest while kissing his forehead.

As he wraps his legs around him, he whispers into his ear. "I loved you because you weren't like everyone else.  
To see beyond anyone else's vision, you fought so hard to change the impossible things these people said you couldn't. To the point of exposing your weakness whenever you defied their oppression and the torture you gave to yourself.

That conflicting imperfection is the foundation of your strength. It is the thing I most admire and covet at the same time."

Then, he kissed him under his ear as Hijikata snored softly.  
Closing his eyes, tenderly, he breathes, "Kaerinasai."

Come home. Come back to me.  
For a while, let's return to where we came from.

When temptation called the pure mermaid, the heart is always the first to fall. It is the overpowering gravity of love, drowning itself with no room to think in its intensity.

This want…this admiration that turns to envy…the wrath of a want becoming a need…  
It is the surest way to become human, for better or for worse. Replacing fins with two feet, can this heavy envy ever return to being pure and weightless again on this disgraceful path?  
Only the passage of time and man can tell.

For the first time in years, peacefully, they sleep soundly in a vision they created together, wondering like curious, scared children if it is all right to claim happiness in the midst of sin.

 _Is it okay for me to be happy? No, actually…  
…will I allow myself to be?_

The sun cracks through the crevices of the room, touching warmly at their feet.

 **Owari.**  
 **-**  
 **Author's note -** This is an idea that flashed through my head when I heard a tune (don't know the name of it), and I wanted to capture a single moment: dramatic, true, and raw as the characters are inside my heart and how I've imagined them inside of my head.  
Yes, Hijikata is a womanizer, but he really was according to historical data. -;;;

Love,  
Yui

Nemurinasai - Go to sleep!  
Kaerinasai - Go home!

October 1, 2005, 2:34 AM


End file.
